How stories, true or not, drive politics

With less than two months to go until the November midterm election, a clear winner is beginning to emerge as the year's hottest political buzzword.

Who could forget — no matter how much we might like to — such hits from years past as "chad," "swift boat" and "lipstick" as it might be smeared on a pig or a pit bull?

On Tuesday, the Austin, Texas-based Global Language Monitor, a Web site that has been monitoring words on thousands of news, blogs and social network sites since 2003, announced the No. 1 political buzzword so far this year — beating out "climate change," "Obama Muslim," "lower taxes" and even "tea partiers" — is (drum roll, please) "the narrative."

"The narrative"? "It's been running strong since last spring," GLM President Paul J.J. Payack told me in a telephone interview.

That confirmed my suspicion. I don't even have a computerized algorithm like Payack does but I, too, had begun to notice in my fanatical surfing of political media that the word "narrative" was popping up with increasing frequency.

For example, Steve and Cokie Roberts observed in a recent column, "For a growing number of Americans, President Barack Obama's narrative no longer defines who he is."

Columnist Maureen Dowd similarly wondered back in June how such a gifted storyteller as Obama could "lose control of his own narrative."

E.J. Dionne, writing in The New Republic, notes Obama has decided to "confront a deeply embedded media narrative that sees a Republican triumph as all but inevitable."

In fact, "the narrative" was popping up so much in reference to Obama as he grappled with crises like the Gulf oil spill that a Washington Post reporter was inspired to lead one feature with, "Sing to me of the Obama narrative, Muse."

But what does it all mean? Why has "the narrative," an ancient word, moved suddenly to center stage in today's politics? I think it has something to do with the growing sophistication of the political spin industry and growing competition between growing media outlets for increasingly fragmented and polarized audiences.

In other words, today's audiences are no longer satisfied with choosing their own news outlets. They also want to choose their own versions of the reality that news covers. Whether they realize it or not, they're shopping for their own "narrative."

Political operatives and increasingly journalists use the term in ways that sound a lot like the old familiars: "spin," "public image," "propaganda" or "party line." But "the narrative" combines all of these strategies into a larger all-encompassing perception of parties, platforms and candidates that boils down to one message: We're on your side and our opponent is a (fill in the blank).

The rise of "the narrative," as Payack observed, is bigger than spin; It renders actual positions on the issues almost meaningless, "since the positions now matter less than what they seem to mean."

Yet President Obama, among others, knows quite well how quickly your narrative can turn from savior to pincushion. That's why Democrats, threatened with losing the House and possibly the Senate, too, are putting more attention on House Minority Leader John Boehner. Polls show the public doesn't know Boehner, and Team Obama is more than happy to provide a narrative to help them out. You don't like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the "San Francisco Democrat"? The new Democratic narrative goes: Say hello to "Speaker Boehner, country club Republican."

Narratives have power. For evidence, look no further than the Bible, whose lasting power comes largely from its storytelling. It is much easier for most of us to remember how Moses received the 10 Commandments, for example, than to remember what all of those commandments were. (A wise editor I once knew boiled all 10 down to one: "Don't!")

The danger comes when politicians and their operatives essentially use "narrative" as shorthand for "bull," the version of the truth that they want us to believe even when they don't.

That's why the rising prominence of "the narratives" in political discourse should serve as a warning to voters. We like to think we're making informed choices between candidates and issues. The campaigns think we're really voting for one narrative over another.

That's not you? Good. But you may be outvoted.

Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage